Feeling at Home and So Far From It

This has been yet another busy and amazing weeks! This week at work we got a couple of new interns and on Wednesday it felt like Intern-Palooza with all the interns out numbering the office employees at least 2 to 1 but the awesome 90s jams got me through the day. The week wasn't anything too amazing at work but I truly love all the people I work with and come Friday instead of running out of the office as soon as I could I found myself staying later just to spend more time with the crew. They are just so fun and with mentions of an office Six Flags trip I was super pumped at the opportunity to spend more time with them all outside of work. We are expecting Meghan back this week so there will probably be lots of cleaning for me this week...yay! With the celebration of our half way mark of our internships Caroline and I went to IHOP Friday night for a yummy sugary dinner. I seem to be missing home a lot this week. With the half way mark upon me suddenly these past few weeks that have seemed to fly by now seem reflecting back that they took forever. I just miss my family and the idea of spending my first 4th of July without them is a lot sadder to me than expected. I have plans to spend the 4th at Newport Beach where there should be lots of people my age and lots of fireworks but I don't think it is going to make-up for my entire family nearly blowing each other up on accident...something about it just isn't as fun. This Monday I went to FHE at my ward for the first time and it was very fun. I very small group of five made up our FHE group and we headed up to the Griffith Park Observatory. It was amazing from up there. We all watched the sunset and once the sky was dark it looked like we were on top of the world. It was absolutely beautiful and the first time that I realized just how small I was is this big big place. I stood up there in amazement and the unsettling feeling of knowing I was truly in a place where I was just another face in the crowd. It was quite amazing to see how many people were there from different countries. As we walked to our open spot I passed so many different languages and so many young people in love helping me realize again just how alone in this world I am and just how much I DON'T want to be anymore. On Thursday I also ventured with some of the Relief Society of my ward to the Santa Monica Temple to do some baptisms. It was beautiful!! So big and it was awesome to see so many members everywhere doing the work! Amazing! Afterwards we girls were hungry and I got to venture with them and have my first In-N-Out Burger in Westwood and I'm in love! It was so simple and yet so delish. I also fell in love with Westwood! It was so cool there and so many people my age just on the streets enjoying being alive together! Perfect! So, this weekend we ventured to Hollywood! It was a fun time getting to see the Hollywood walk of fame, which we realized was the entirety of Hollywood Blvd. I'm not sure what we had imagined but we didn't realized just how many stars there were! We also found the Grauman's Chinese Theater and put our hands and feet in some stars prints, but I think were a little disappointed with the lack of stars that we knew or really liked in it. We had a fun time until we realized that we had seriously lost my car! With the stars on the walk to look at we quickly were just watching the ground and not looking up at all and so this made it really hard to remember what things were around where we parked! And of course we didn't remember what streets we parked on. It really is a good thing the stars are on the ground though because their are just so many adult stores it was ridiculous! I mean how many does one street need! We finally found it and drove around trying to find Melrose street and then figured out that it was not the part of Melrose that Caroline had thought it was and headed home for a very late dinner. We got lost on the way home which added to my poop mood that had formed at this time from the aimless driving previously. But I quickly realized that we were driving into Pasadena and was able to get us back on track pretty quick. I mean that's not too bad, my first time to get lost was 4 weeks into my stay...pretty good I say. Church today was lovely and I was invited to the UCLA ward which I think I will be visiting next Sunday! I also venture to Griffith Park to meet my new girlfriend from church, Ashley, for her birthday picnic. Apparently lots of people like to get out on Sundays her in LA. The roads were packed and so was the park and I never found Ashley; after 30 minutes of searching I headed back home for dinner. I also found out today that my Bishop at my home ward, Bishop Barnes, was released from his calling and will no longer be my Bishop when I get home. I want to welcome our new bishop but I don't feel like opening up to someone all over again. Bishop knows everything about me and is the only person that I ever want to talk to. I have never had such a great realationship with a bishop and I think our whole ward would agree. I'm just so sad to see him go and the fact that I was not there is even more heartbreaking to me! I just want to be at home with my ward. I will have to be positive and not sad when I get home to a very changed ward. This week has been an amazingly busy one and I can only hope that the other half of my time spent here will be as happy and enjoyable as the first. Oh and I don't think it would hurt to keep movin along quickly...I hate to rush time along so I will enjoy it while I have it!

Xs and Os!

~Leslie

You never know who may be an angel.

Okie dokie, so I'm obviously late with week 3 but my computer started to run slow so, I switched my antivirus software and it began running even slower. After asking my super tech boss for help I brought it to the office and he discovered that I had 500 viruses!! REALLY! So he went to work trying to clear them and it looked like a lost cause for a couple days and right before the weekend he was pretty sure he had solved it and I let it rest for the weekend before getting its new antivirus put on Monday. Wow! What a week to have a down computer, so much I wanted to blog about. So week 3 was crazy! Two of our employees went on vacation right as we got a huge shipment in from production in China. The shipment was late receiving so as a team of three, including myself, we headed to our warehouse to un-box, hang, quality check (QC), pull damages, tag, check-in, pick orders, check-out, and then our warehouse did the boxing, and we shipped! We did this for hundreds and hundreds of garments, it was crazy, and as sucky as it probably was for Erica and Joanna (my co-workers, not interns) who have to do this all too often, for me it was exciting, interesting, and such a great learning experience. It was really hard work but it was nice to be out of the office for 3 days and it really gave me a chance to get to know the girls! I am really feeling at home in my office! I absolutely love everyone I work with and enjoy being the only intern their with them everyday...I'm a little selfish. I also found out that I get reimbursed for my lunches as well as my mileage, which is such a blessing. I am getting super good at driving like a LA driver and I just keep praying that I am safe on the roads everyday...I only have this ONE car (and it's not just mine)! So an awesome week of learning at work. This weekend Caroline and I traveled to Pasadena. We were told its sorta like the Midwest, and we were interested in anything that was close to home. We went there and found the coolest humane society we had ever seen! We missed our pets and decided to visit it when we saw it passing by. Now besides the usual cat and dogs of the humane society Pasadena Humane Society had rabbits, turtles, chickens, roosters, and an alligator for adoption. Ok, the alligator wasn't for adoption but everything else was!! It was awesome and so big! We just took in the friendly people, short buildings, and greenery of Pasadena for the day. I decided if life ever calls me to work in LA I will be living in Pasadena! On Sunday I enjoyed church and then a special visit from an OSU classmate who had come to LA for a visit with her parents. It was nice to see a familiar face for a few hours. After seeing our friend Caroline and I went to Courtney and Paul's house (a couple from my church). They had invited us to dinner and only live two blocks away. It was such a great time and it was nice to be in a place that felt homie. They were just so enjoyable and the dinner was amazing! I had an amazing out of work experience this week. I find myself walking to work enjoying the beauty of life even in this hard town and then I walk past a homeless man or woman. I breaks my heart. I am so blessed in life and I only want the same for these people even though I don't know them or know how they have come to be where they are. Deserving or not...I pray for better for them. I was walking home from work one evening with my i-pod playing and a face pace to my walk a gentleman begged my pardon and I stopped and pulled out my headphone. He told me he was sorry to burden me but wondered if I had any spare money so that he could get some food that the fast food place I had just pasted. He told me that he hated to ask but he did have a job anymore. I told him that a probably had a couple dollars for him and he began to tell me how upset he was with the way California treats its vets, that he was a Veteran and that he had nothing after his time in Iraq. I told him that I was sorry too and that it was crazy for me to see so many people homeless because I wasn't from around here. I told him I was sorry I only had a couple dollars, that I was a college student and I'm pretty broke myself. He told me that he had a daughter here in California that is in college. It broke my heart to think how hard that must wear on both of their hearts. Him wishing he could support her as a father should and she wishing her father had a better life. I gave him the money and told him that I appreciated what he has done for our country and for me and said God bless you. He looked at me with the most joyous and happy eyes and smile. He lifted his arms and without a second thought in the middle of this busy LA sidewalk in the midst of onlooking passersby I walked forward and hugged my new stranger soul. I saw the looks the people were giving us and once we hugged he looked at me and told me that I didn't know the blessings I would receive from this, I smiled and said take care and began to walk away as he yelled after me "You don't even know the blessings you are going to receive"! I was talking to my father on the phone a few days later, whom is also struggling in life right now as so many of us are. He was down on himself for not being the financially supportive father that he had always wanted to be for us. I explained to him that there was so much more to that he has been able to support me in in life. I told him my story of the man I had met and our story of our encounter. I told him, dad, don't you remember when we were younger and you gave a man outside of Wal-Mart money and we said, dad why would you do that he will go buy beer or drugs with it. He looked back at us and told us, "Girls, that may be true, and whether he uses that money for the right things or not its important to help those around us in need; after all, we never know, he may be an angel. This could be our test, and we know we've done right". I told him how this life lesson of service and compassion had always stuck with me and how fortunate I was to have this knowledge taught to me through his real life example. It brought some joy to his voice and tears in my eyes. An amazing experience with a stranger that I will never EVER forget.

Xs and Os

~Leslie

Lakers Fans Are CRAZY!

So week two rap up. This work week flew by and I must say I was very happy it did! I am truly beginning to feel at home with my work crew and dancing with the idea of liking LA, but not enough to want to live here. This week I got to go around with my supervisor and assistant designer Erica to see where all of our contractors are. We have local contractors for sewing and pattern making so it was very exciting to see these locations and meet these people. We went to a place where we get a lot of our trims for sample dresses before they are sent to China to be massed produced. The most amazing place. A warehouse with boxes with the trims within taped to the outside. These boxes were stacked sooo high ladders were used to clime to the top to retrieve desired trims. This week at work I also went through every garment offered online for sell and entered into an excel document the specs of the garments for a more pleasing shopping experience. This took, working on and off, the entire week, but is a nice change from hand sewing. This week I was also gifted with Meghan and had the opportunity to get my little sisters birthday present and I just can't wait for her to have it! Caroline and I find ourselves coming home at nights and sitting in front of our laptops watching episodes of TV shows on Hulu and its getting old very quick. And while our apartments leasing office realizes that the only thing they can keep from me is my gym membership while waiting for Caroline's father to sign a form saying "yes, I am her roommate" I am really getting restless. I am so ready for that gym and I think I am at the prepared point to just go be aggressive with the office and get it because this wouldn't even be the situation if only the temp girl had entered Caroline's information correctly. Aggravating! I have come to a realization however that I really should spend some of my after work time on learning and remembering my Spanish since I am in the middle of so much of it. This weekend we had planned to visit Huntington Beach because a friend of mine was having a beach party and we wanted to experience that! We had also decided that we wanted to go see the Wizard of Oz, Dorthy's Red Slippers, display that was going on at the FIDM museum. So Saturday morning we got ready and headed to the museum, walking since it was only a few blocks away. Once stumbling into the building and learning from a security guard that we were not allowed in the building since we were not students and that the museum was around the corner we laughed it off and headed in. The displays were amazing! These floating bubbles hung from the ceiling displayed the various designers that had come into partner with this event and design challenge. We saw some amazing interpretations and gave me, a not in the least bit fan of Wizard of Oz, a lot of excitement! I mean the slippers were the only good part! After that fun and excitement we decided to venture to the fast food places I had seen on my way home from church last week to get some cheap and delicious Taco Bell! We wound up walking several city blocks just to get some Taco Bell...I mean a good 30 minute walk at least, but it passed quickly with our talking and amazement of our surroundings. But lucky us realized that we could catch the bus back within a couple blocks of our place. We ran back up to the loft and gathered our things and headed off the Huntington. We got there surprisingly quickly and easily! It was awesome to drive into! The beautiful sand and all the people out enjoying it! We found a good, FREE, place to park and headed in! The sand was awesome and Caroline and I hadn't remembered from our childhood how hard it was to walk in the sand. We decided to run and put our feet in! I, of course, got way too excited and even with my pants up to my knees I still got them soaked. We realized we were ready to get in a little more than we thought so we quickly changed and played around for a while. We had read before leaving the loft of Main St. and the pier and wanted to go check out all it had before meeting up with our group. We wound up literally spending 5 hours on Main St. in and out of all the various stores and after dinner at 9:30 had missed the beach party in its entirety. Not too bumbed but very tired we headed home and slept like ROCKS!! On Sunday later in the evening the Los Angeles Lakers had a basketball game. Lakers fans love their team so much that men love to skip down the streets! I have never seen so many car flags and sooo many honking cars at once. We were more than amused and have spent mass amounts of time at our window starring down at the fans and crazy cars on the street. Caroline and I a little oblivious to professional sports didn't realize that this was the National Championship and this is why our neighbors decided to yell and wave flags out the window to EVERY passing Lakers fan. And this is why we won't be getting any sleep tonight!
Xs and Os
~Leslie

Let Me Catch You Up On Things

My first week in LA was super insane! I drove out and arrived Friday night. After a long and really difficult night for me I finally got 4 hours of sleep. I spent that weekend moving and adjusting my things in my corner of our loft studio apartment and trying to adjust to what would be my new home for the next 9 weeks. We live in a really tall apartment building and apartment living is definitely something I am not used to. Our neighborhood is considered very nice and I didn't think it was too bad. We even have a grocer just around the corner...literally! Upon my adventure to find where I will be working FOR FREE as an intern for the next 9 weeks I began to realize just how very different things are from home. You go about 4 blocks down and you start to get into neighborhoods that are very sketchy and I felt a sudden need to be very on guard. I work in the fashion district and I was very shocked to see just how unglamorous the fashion district was! Everything looked so rough and not at all how I had truly imagined it! I work in a building that looks really rough on the outside and I was quite sure it very well was not the place I worked all the way up until my first morning of work. Once you go through this big metal gate door it starts to become a little more lovely. Upstairs where my office is it is much more like I would have imagined. My office is really cool. A big open studio with everyone working together in this one office. My first day was intense but sadly not as glamorous as I had expected. I spent 8 hours sitting at the "craft" table hand sewing beads and size labels onto garments. NOT at all what I was thinking I would be doing on my first day. It actually went just like that the second day too. On the third day I was prepared for the same and to my pleasant surprise things were different. We had a photo shoot in office and it was tons of fun to watch! We also had a fit model come in and I got to watch as Meghan checked the fit of garments that were going through production. Really cool to see the things I have learned in work in real life! I also got to take home a sample dress that night and I was really pumped!! My first Meghan. A dress that was about $250! So it was super awesome to get for free! I was still struggling though with the fact that I just didn't want to be in LA. It wasn't what I thought it would be, and the funny thing is I didn't even have a good idea of what I expected it to be. The weather wasn't sunshiny and as my time here has progressed I have learned of the common on the California phrase of "June Gloom" which is really not making my adjusting any better. I decided that I needed to be more positive about this wonderful opportunity that I had been blessed with and began to smile a little more with each day! Work most days is pretty rad and I enjoy it...some days much more than others. I see myself learning a lot! My walk has even got less scary to me. I walk five blocks down to Main St. and then go left for another 5 blocks to my office. I feel as if I have been living here for years on my walk to work. I am even sorta getting used to the stares I get from all the male Mexican workers the entire 5 blocks down Main. I just smile and say good morning back. Some people are really nice and I have had a few morning compliments that have really brightened my day, like: "I like your style, its so natural and beautiful" and "You have a wonderful smile". The kindness of strangers has helped pick me up a few mornings! I have also attended the student ward as of last Sunday and it was wonderful! The exception to my student ward at home is that it is not just a singles ward...it is just for students in general which translates to everyone that has not gone home for the summer is married and even some have babies...so a slight disappointment to the hopes of finding my California love. I made really good friends already with a lot of the girls and one couple was so sweet to bring my a chair that they didn't need anymore so that I wasn't always having to sit on a beanbag. Oh and I spent Saturday in Chinatown, which was a nice little adventure. We rode the bus over for 25 cents! That was great! We spent the day just exploring the strange little shops and taking in all the excitement, even making a few family gift purchases! We had lunch there and later that evening caught the very last bus for the evening leaving Chinatown. Overall the first week was CRAZY!! And I just kept lying to myself telling myself that I am getting used to it. It was just so so so much to take in and I was feeling sad missing friends and family and feeling like I left some really great opportunities in Stillwater that I may never get to have. Overall...a week I will never forget!